Alibaba revenue model

By Emma Thomasson and Sonya Dowsett BERLIN/MADRID (Reuters) - Models testing fashion brands like Adidas, Benetton and Gap are finding that almost a third of the shoes and clothes they try on are bigger or smaller than the size on the label indicates, explaining why many clothes bought online are sent back.Calculating sizes more accurately could help online retailers like Germany's Zalando and Britain's ASOS cut costly returns and improve customer satisfaction."If you try on the same brand in a different color it is sometimes a different size," Zalando fitting model Savina Bellotto said as she squeezed a foot into a stiletto shoe with a shiny silver buckle that dug into her ankle. Discounting to shift stock means fashion retailers are struggling to preserve profit margins, and ASOS's warning on Monday of a major downturn caused retail shares to tumble.Targeting returns, fast fashion firms like Zara and H&M have introduced software that suggests sizes for online customers. Customers … [Read more...] about Online clothing retailers hunt for better fit to cut costly returns

Business Route 9 skims by Boston and cuts clear across Massachusetts to Pittsfield, a city of roughly 50,000, the largest in Berkshire County. Well east of Pittsfield, Route 9 becomes Worcester Road, named for a city that in earlier times was the nation’s largest manufacturer of wire—barbed wire, electrical wire, telephone wire and the wire used in the making of undergarments by the Royal Worcester Corset Co., once the largest employer of women in the United States. Older Worcester residents can still recall the factory bells pealing to signal the start and end of the workday. Now, the bells are silent, and the wire and corset factories have been replaced with three of the nation’s largest employers: Walmart, Target and Home Depot.If this sounds familiar, it should. It has been nearly two decades since retail overtook manufacturing as the nation’s most important job creator, employing roughly one of every 10 American workers—more people than in health care … [Read more...] about AI and Automation Will Replace Most Human Workers Because They Don’t Have to Be Perfect—Just Better Than You

Apple CEO Tim Cook has said multiple times that the iPhone is the most popular smartphone in China. Stephanie Keith/Getty Images Apple stock, which was recommended by experts as the only safe investment in today’s turbulent stock market not long ago, surprisingly tumbled four percent during Monday’s early trading after a key supplier of iPhone components signaled that Apple was going to make fewer iPhones due to falling demand.Lumentum, a laser manufacturer that makes components for iPhones’ front-facing cameras that enable facial recognition (Face ID), announced a reduced production forecast for the second fiscal quarter in 2019 (September 2019 to December 2018) on Monday, citing an order cutback by a key customer.“We recently received a request from one of our largest industrial and consumer customers for laser diodes for 3D sensing to materially reduce shipments to them during our fiscal second quarter for previously placed orders that were originally … [Read more...] about Why Apple Stock Suddenly Fell 4 Percent Despite Strong iPhone Sales

Bloomberg Published 9:43 am PDT, Thursday, October 18, 2018 Visitors wait in the lobby at the JD.com headquarters in Beijing on Dec. 1, 2015. Visitors wait in the lobby at the JD.com headquarters in Beijing on Dec. 1, 2015. Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Image 1 of 1 Visitors wait in the lobby at the JD.com headquarters in Beijing on Dec. 1, 2015. Visitors wait in the lobby at the JD.com headquarters in Beijing on Dec. 1, 2015. Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg China's JD to launch flagship US store on Google this year 1 / 1 Back to Gallery JD.com will launch a flagship online store on Google's shopping platforms to sell directly to American consumers by the end of the … [Read more...] about China’s JD to launch flagship US store on Google this year

Sections SEARCH Skip to content Skip to site index Subscribe Log In Rent the Runway’s Unlimited service saves working women something more valuable than money: their time. Rent the Runway says its 250,000-square-foot warehouse in Secaucus, N.J., is the largest dry-cleaning facility in the world. Credit Credit George Etheredge for The New York Times Supported by BySheila Marikar Oct. 12, 2018 On a Friday morning in August, Sushma Dwivedi, a senior vice president at Edelman, the global marketing conglomerate, bustled around her Harlem apartment in a blue-and-white-striped cotton dress. With her toddler and newborn out with a nanny, Ms. Dwivedi, who was on maternity leave but preparing for a meeting with a senior colleague in a few days, intended to get some things done. High on her list: assessing the contents of a recently delivered dark-blue garment bag. Ms. Dwivedi, 37, is a member of Rent the Runway Unlimited, a service … [Read more...] about The Transformational Bliss of Borrowing Your Office Clothes